| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

David Edgerton. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. New York: Oxford University Press. 2007. Pp. xviii, 270. $26.00.
According to David Edgerton, current studies of technology mistakenly focus on innovation. Historians of technology emphasize inventions, innovations (first use of new things), patents, diffusion of new technologies, research and development, and historical periods determined by breakthrough inventions. Innovation-driven technology coupled to a progressive historical outlook leads to forecasts of a glorious future for humankind. That is how we arrived at our misguided belief in the wonders of the atomic age—unlimited cheap energy—and the Information Age—one world unified by the Internet. The promoters of new technologies have led us astray and it is time we got back on track.	1
Edgerton argues that we should concentrate on technology-in-use and not on technology as the producer of novelty. A use-based history will "shift attention from the new to the old, the big to the small, the spectacular to the mundane, the masculine to the feminine, [and] the rich to the poor" (p. xiv).	2
Technology-in-use challenges the idea that progress is a product of technological change and rejects a historical timeline based on "major" inventions. Under the new dispensation, old and new technologies operate side by side and are often jumbled together. The use-perspective of technology reveals that the majority of scientists and engineers do not create novel technologies but operate and maintain existing ones. Finally, we will encounter "creole technology," technology that originates in rich countries but is adapted and transformed by poor countries to meet their special needs.	. . .

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